This is What The Resistance Looks Like — Cities, States and Nations Run on 100 Percent Renewable Power

The sparks of resistance to a harmful domination of energy supplies by the fossil fuel industry are out there. They are the lights of clean power generation blooming like stars across a world blackened by smokestack emissions and imperiled by climate change.

It’s the great loud, sad, and ignorance-filled reaction against a better future. A political and legislative backlash funded by oil, gas, and coal company campaign donations, advertising dollars, and indirect media investments. One that seeks to remove the possibility for a time when energy does not pollute the air or water — resulting in 7 million premature deaths each year globally. For one when climates are not, by incessant fossil fuel burning, pushed ever-closer to the hothouse extinction states that killed so much of life on Earth in the great long ago.

(There used to be a number of forward-looking republicans who both stood as leaders of their party and provided strong support for clean power. What happened? Where are these clear and reasonable voices now? Arnold calls BS on politicians fighting against clean energy, who like Trump and many current-day republicans, are claiming it’s too costly or difficult to switch away from fossil fuels. Video source: Attn.)

But despite this surge of destructive reactionism on the part of U.S. republicans and in such varied legislative bodies as the UK and Australia, the hopeful movement toward a future which includes the potential for human civilization survival and long-term prosperity continues. It’s a movement powered by individuals, by sustainable industries, by cities, by states and by nations who recognize the need for a more hopeful, more beneficial path than the one the fossil fuel industry and their political cohorts, like Trump, are now seeking to force upon them. They are the base of a very necessary resistance to a malign and yet still powerful global influence. And they are resisting by simply finding a way to shine lights powered by clean energy in the darkness and smog of this dying hydrocarbon age.

Las Vegas isn’t the only one. Greensburg, Kansas runs on 100 percent renewable power — including electricity provided to individual residences. Burlington, Vermont and Aspen, Colorado also provide 100 percent renewable energy for city infrastructure, industry and residences. The list of cities already achieving or close to achieving 100 percent renewable power goals goes on to include Columbia, Maryland; East Hampton, New York; Georgetown, Texas; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Greensburg, Kansas; Nassau, New York and Rochester, Minnesota. In California — a state that governor Jerry Brown has pledged will continue its clean energy progress despite what appear to be a broad array of incoming attacks on renewables by Trump and republicans — Paolo Alto is joined by Lancaster, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, and Santa Monica as cities that have all achieved or are pursuing 100 percent renewable power generation.

(President Obama is proud of U.S. solar energy and climate leadership. This support helped Obama to create 14 million jobs over the course of his Presidency. Donald Trump appears to be ready to attack one of the U.S.’s few remaining cutting edge industries and along with it middle class jobs. Image source: White House.)

As with climate scientists, it’s likely that sustainable communities like these will fall on the target lists of republican party leaders allied to a fossil fuel industry that’s increasingly desperate to legislatively capture energy customers — providing them no option to escape from harmful power sources. But many city leaders are fed up and won’t have any of it. To this point, 48 mayors issued an open letter to Donald Trump stating:

The effects of climate change — extreme storms, wildfires and drought; sea level rise and storm surge; choking air pollution in cities; disruption of agricultural supply chains and jobs in rural heartlands; and coastal erosion, to name a few — are a clear and present danger to American interests at home and abroad… As Mayors, we have taken it upon ourselves to take bold action within our cities to tackle the climate crisis head-on. We write today to ask for your partnership in our work to clean our air, strengthen our economy, and ensure that our children inherit a nation healthier and better prepared for the future than it is today.

A Global Resistance to the Harmful Energy Sources that Cause Climate Change

Across the Atlantic, a Scottish golf course constructed by Donald Trump is now receiving power from renewable energy sources like the wind turbines he continues to oppose. Today Scotland generates 72 percent of its electrical energy from non carbon sources. A figure that the Scottish government is aiming to push to 100 percent by 2020. Meanwhile, the European island of Iceland has long received the bulk of its electricity and thermal energy from renewable hydro and geothermal sources.

On Tuesday, December 20, India — which will soon be the most highly populated country in the world — announced that it would completely halt new coal plant construction through 2027. India faces worsening droughts, glacial outburst floods in the Himalayas, killing heat, and a flood destabilized Bangladesh to its east so long as global temperatures continue to rise. The country is also seeing rapid economic growth and increases in prosperity. But this prosperity is threatened by climate change impacts. For a country faced with destabilization of nations on its borders, inundated coastlines, killing heat in its heartland, and rampant drought as rivers dry up and glaciers disappear finds aspirations for a prosperous future imperiled.

(India plans a major revamp of policy by ambitiously pursuing renewables while completely curtailing new coal plant building. Under such a plan, and with Trump coming in as President, one wonders if the U.S. will fall far behind other nations leading the charge into a future powered by clean energy. Will Trump attack the very industries at home that would benefit from India’s drive to seek renewable energy partners? American mainstays like Tesla, Solar City, GE wind, SunPower, and First Solar would all benefit from such a potential relationship. But will Trump’s anti-renewables fossil fuel based ideology blind him to this obvious opportunity to help U.S. business interests abroad? Image provided by Renew Economy.)

India’s response is to rationally cap coal consumption by 2022 while undertaking a massive renewable energy build-out. By 2027, India plans to add 215 gigawatts of renewables, and 39 gigawatts of nuclear and hydro power. Coal plant construction will be limited to those plants that are currently under contract. But the state already predicts that the capacity will be under-utilized, resulting in stranded fossil fuel ‘assets’ — which could produce a drag on markets both at home and abroad.

Under the new plan, India will boast a majority renewable and zero emission power generation capacity by 2027. And this action appears to be laying the groundwork for a larger energy switch as India’s Energy Minister Piyush Goyalhas stated a clear goal to “look at a world beyond fossil fuels” and to aim to cut fossil fuel imports.

Clean Power Resistance to Ideologies and Industries Destined for Dramatic Failure

In the end, what we see is a world in which renewable energy is making a great leap forward. A world where the considerable but waning fossil fuel powers are panicking and lashing out as they begin to enter decline. We see this reactionary backlash in climate change denial, in attacks on scientists, in an amoral pandering toward fears, bigotry and extremism, in brazen attempts to erode democratic institutions and attack the Constitutional integrity of the electoral process in the U.S., and in Trump’s and Republicans’ insistence on protecting fading industries destined to fail. We also see it in their attacks against the new and helpful industries and the agencies, like the EPA and NASA, that produce so many beneficial public goods.

What their actions and reactions will produce — by intentionally injecting authoritarianism, chaos and instability — is a delay to the entry of these helpful power sources. A delay that will lock in worse climate harms even as it hobbles the most innovative and helpful segment of emerging industry within the United States. A delay engineered by leveraging all the darker angels of the American psyche. And as with many of the other policies now being promoted by republicans, this subset is as ludicrously out of touch with present day politics, history, societies, and industry as it is brazenly harmful to pretty much everyone.

But the resistance to this darkness and retrenchment has arrived in the form of new opportunity and progressive movement. It has arrived in the form of a very real and clean enlightenment of the global energy production system. One that breaks the ancient ties to destructive extraction and burning. And there could be no better cause than supporting this resistance by doing your part to aid the transition to clean power.

Shawn Redmond

Can you doubt that we’re in a dystopian age, even if we’re still four weeks from Donald Trump entering the Oval Office? Never in our lifetimes have we experienced such vivid previews of what unfettered capitalism is likely to mean in an ever more unequal country, now that its version of 1% politics has elevated to the pinnacle of power a bizarre billionaire and his “basket of deplorables.” I’m referring, of course, not to his followers but to his picks for the highest posts in the land. These include a series of generals ready to lead us into a new set of crusades and a crew of billionaires and multimillionaires prepared to make America theirs again.

It’s already a stunningly depressing moment — and it hasn’t even begun. At the very least, it calls upon the rest of us to rise to the occasion. That means mustering a dystopian imagination that matches the era to come.

I have no doubt that you’re as capable as I am of creating bleak scenarios for the future of this country (not to speak of the planet). But just to get the ball rolling on the eve of the holidays, let me offer you a couple of my own dystopian fantasies, focused on the potential actions of President Donald Trump.

mulga mumblebrain

Shawn, better a complete lunatic who wakes people up, before it’s too late, from their deep slumber, than yet another soothing dissembler, promising Hope, Change and Christmas Pudding, but delivering nothing but prevarication and unfulfilled ‘Promise’. If Trump and his ‘Despicables’ in his Cabinet of Dr. Caligarish incite people to FIGHT for their children’s future, it will be worth the present horror of anticipation.

Mulga, if you’re hoping that Trump will incite some form of revolution I sure hope not. I just read a very insightful interview with Anthony Bourdain, and he brought up the point that revolutions seem to always end badly, and it’s the liberals and progressives that always lose out / get killed first in revolutions. However, if you’re meaning the kind of non-violent resistance that RS is talking about, then ok. I should probably read up on Ghandi and the history of how India gained independence though. I have a feeling there are valuable lessons there.

mulga mumblebrain

Marcel, I mean a complete change from the current neo-liberal capitalist pathocracy, kakistocracy, kleptocracy and plutocracy. As long as humanity is TOTALLY dominated by the worst among us, the greediest, the most cruel, the most egomaniacal etc, then we will go extinct, within decades, either through massive ecological collapse, or a thermo-nuclear war launched by the lunatic in the White House. I don’t see any other course of action. If the revolt turns violent, or, far more likely, is met by savage violence from the parasites, that’s just too bad-sitting back, begging not to be exterminated ain’t going to work. Appealing to those without consciences is futile. Gandhi won simply because the UK was too exhausted to suppress his movement, the US wanted the UK out as part of its Cold War against Communism, and because Churchill lost the UK election, and Labour was in favour of getting out. In any case it all ended in the bloodbath of Partition.

lesliegraham1

Mulga, From a purely practical viewpoint there is fairly strong evidence that non-violent protest achieves its aims twice as effectively as violent protest.
This came as something of a disappointment to me as I was always fancied myself as a bit of a ‘sharpen your pitchforks’ sort of chap in my youth. So long as I was near the back of course.
Here is one of many articles available.

mulga mumblebrain

leslie, I think the success of ‘non-violence’ depends on the nature of the ruling regime. I hope you are correct, but I rather suspect that the resistance to change from the ruling Western elites, who have been so ruthless and determined in their class warfare and attacks on science and rationality for the last forty years, will be extreme. I hope I’m wrong, but being a pessimist has never let me down heretofore.

lesliegraham1

I hope you’re wrong too because we would be annihilated. Pea-shooters and the moral high ground don’t cut it against tanks and massed machine guns as the Chinese students (anyone remember them? ) found out.
Having said that there is no doubt that ‘the left’ in the US (in most western countries they would be labeled centre right) have been arming up with more sophisticated weapons since Trump became PE.
Hilariously, the traditional extreme-right ‘preppers’ have been busy selling off their food stocks and shelters to ‘the left’ at bargain prices because they ‘know’ that now Trump has been elected their fantasies will all come true and the US is going to be great again.
There is still a big imbalance between the firearms owned by fascist sympathisers and those owned by ‘the left’ however.

cwlongway

Nearly all success that has been achieved with passive resistance has come with Dr. Gene Sharp’s methods. These can be found on the Albert Einstein Institution’s website. I do think that the best chance we have is with passive resistance. We need to be organized. Here is the list of 198 actions that Sharp things will help. These methods have been translated into many languages and put into practice around the world.

Some Ideas I could do myself:
Shirts with graphs on them as a way to be a personal advertisement. Perhaps people would even buy shirts on line if they came into style. If we could get a million people wearing graphs it would be harder for the public to be deceived.
Prayer – It worked at Standing Rock. I often pray anyway for the safety of Robert, and the courage of Colorado Bob.
Starting a revolving fund where people incentivize others to go solar or get EVs. I have tried to get family members to go renewable, but no takers yet. When people pay off their investment to the point they have extra money, they leverage the next family. If we could get a philanthropist to get it started, it could grow exponentially. I save several thousand a year with my solar and EVs. No reason I could not leverage 1 person a year to go renewable, with a commitment from them to start leveraging others in several years.
Join an organization that is making a difference like 350.org.

jharan

I find that as we settle more and more into the grim reality of the upcoming administration, I am thinking more about Stephen King’s book, The Stand. Somehow it is beginning to feel a lot like that book. Remember the scene near the beginning when someone calls for an ambulance and they’re basically told that It’s going to be quite awhile, if ever? The whole thing is shaping up into the classic Good vs Evil paradigm, much more obviously and faster than even I would have thought.

sunkensheep

I’m no fan of capitalism, but what we are seeing is a threatened industry protecting itself with the institutions of the state. Worldwide, they are supporting the right wing to retard change, and nationalists to weaken the reach of international treaties (in particular anti-CO2 agreements). While the fossil fuel lobbyists have lost China and much of the developing world, if even half of what Trump says is what he does America is about to throw one last great fossil and debt fuelled party before the whole thing comes down on their heads. From a climate point of view, that is still disastrous.

Ailsa

‘Damn Right.’ Thanks for this, Ailsa. It’s great to see so many people in the media stepping up on this. The Weather Channel countering Brietbart was classic — exactly the kind of thing they are positioned to do. This is the kind of stuff that will counter climate change denial. Wish Trump didn’t have to be elected for it to happen.

One of the muddying attempts by deniers is to claim a meteorologist doesn’t believe in AGW, and people seem to listen more to the meteorology community rather than the climate people (well known TV face, I suppose). Good to see those like the WC putting time into this.

Ken

Any news on places electrifying systems that still rely on fossil fuels like heat and transit? Electricity generation is a big first step, but all of our fossil fuel infrastructure needs to be switched too – something I don’t see mentioned very often. Obviously this increases demand, requiring even more renewable supply.

climatehawk1

Andy_in_SD

An oxymoronic statement is that using solar & wind will make industry noncompetitive. That is actually 100% incorrect, the truth is actually the opposite.

Once in place, industry is not at the whims of fuel cost fluctuation, and at an end cost per watt that is below that of fossil fuels, the per unit cost for manufacturing factors into costs and profits.

Bingo. There are at least as many myths circulating about renewable energy as there are about climate change. A person could set up a website similar to skeptical science simply dedicated to debunking them. We get swamped by these crank and crackpot theories practically every time someone brings up renewables here or I post an article covering the subject. I just delete them.

Jim

I’ve followed the energy markets for years (sort of a nerdy hobby of mine, but interesting because energy is fundamental to economic activity and fossil fuel based energy causes environmental destruction). In the last two years something remarkable has happened. Andy mentioned part of it above, price reductions have made wind and PV solar the lowest cost ways to generate electricity, and prices are still dropping. But equally as impressive, LiIon battery costs are plummeting as massive global investments in manufacturing capacity are just beginning to come on line.

In November a 800 MW PV solar power project was awarded by Dubai Electricity and Water Authority for an astonishing .0299 cents per KwH – that’s for capital cost of the equipment, maintenance, and operations – everything. In contrast, just the operating cost of thermal coal is .0373 and Nat gas is .0332 according to the EIA, and that’s before the construction costs of the plants are amortized in. Globally 66% of new electricity generating capacity are renewables – mostly PV and wind and the pace is accelerating with countries like China and India leading the way.

Similarly it’s believed that Tesla’s LiIon battery costs are approaching $100/kWh. At this point the construction costs of electric cars reaches parity with internal combustion engine cars meeting US emission standards Further, battery prices are dropping about 20% per year and accelerating. Gas to drive my 20mpg Acura costs $12.50 /100 miles ($2.50/gallon). Electricity to go the same distance: $1.80 (.072/kWh off peak, 4 miles per kWH), an astonishing 86% reduction in fuel costs.

Fossil fuel interests, entrenched electric utilities and the politicians they buy, are doing everything in their power to slow the transition to a clean, low cost energy economy. While they can create regulatory barriers, their greatest weapon is mis-information, making people think fossil fuels are the only economical way to go and alternatives are impractical or costly. How many times have you heard commercials that claim “clean, low cost” natural gas is the ideal bridge fuel? The implication being, that we’re still waiting for lower cost renewables. Or that “low cost clean coal” will lift millions out of poverty. Bullshit. Both are designed to keep people in energy poverty. Renewables are already the lowest cost way to produce electricity we don’t need a bridge to it, we need to deploy more of it.

As individuals we can implement change. Consider buying PV solar for your house. In Arizona, where I live, the payback time is 6.5 years, after that the electricity they generate for the remainder of their 20 year life is free. If you can’t afford to buy, lease. Look into electric cars. Not everyone can afford a Tesla, but the Chevy Volt is a great car and has a reasonable electric range, and the Nissan Leaf is not a bad car. If you have the time, get involved with local utility regulatory meetings to push for reasonable regulatory policies that don’t hamper the move to PV solar.

Three years ago I installed a small PV system on my home, that cut my carbon footprint from 30 tons per year to 20 tons per year. I plan to expand the system as cost come down, and will invest in an electric car in the next year or so. I fully realize not everyone has those options, maybe you must drive long miles, or live in an apartment where you can’t install solar. In that case, simply educate your friends and co-workers on the realities of renewable energy – it’s already cheaper than the alternative and getting cheaper by the day. If they don’t hear that message from the readers here, they won’t hear it at all because the media doesn’t go out of it’s way to tell you Dubai and UAE are investing in PV solar because they see the looming end of the fossil fuel era.

It may seem dark now, but the world is approaching a massive energy tipping point. In some cases it is driven by moral courage, but increasing it’s driven by economics. As costs plummet and momentum grows (remember we’re already at 66% of new electricity generation being PV+wind), it won’t be long before it simply becomes uneconomical to run fossil fuel plants.

Jim

utoutback

Listening to the Dianne Rehm show today on the limits to Executive Power I was encouraged that “he” (I will not use his name or call him President) will not have an easy time achieving his goals. I increased a monthly donation to NRDC in anticipation of the legal actions to come.http://thedianerehmshow.org/
Keep the faith and don’t give up the fight.

Greg

Wil be there with my wife and all her friends coming in from all over the country. Have come to realize that I need to be surrounded by progressive activists and stand with them en masse to reenergize right now.or the funk will settle into my heart and gut.

Genomik

Just wondering if a average consumer can contact their local utility and ask to get electricity solely from the renewables portion of the utilities energy mix. Even (or especially) if it costs a bit more. That would be an excellent form of rebellion. For many people its worth it to $150/mo instead of $100/mo.
Or are there rules or regulations about it?
its pretty conceptually near free to transport, at least compared to distance.
Globally?

Vic

Spike

Good Energy and Ecotricity are 2 companies doing just that in the UK, and more are appearing. Their rates aren’t the cheapest deal around I suspect because they’ve had to build or buy lots of new renewable generation, but they have great levels of service and fair dealing compared to our “big six” which are uniformly awful.

We’ve been on Bullfrog Power for more than 10 years, and yes, the premium isn’t really very much. I’m now thinking about Bullfrog Gas, but I also want to replace the ICE vehicle with some form of plug in, so I’m still figuring out where to put the money. The gas plan is probably a more cost effective carbon reduction, but the vehicle has to be replaced soon anyway, and I want to help to bring Electric Vehicles mainstream so they can start to bite into the oil industry. I’ve read that EVs are contagious, so the more people see them, the more they’ll consider them, and I also figure it sends a signal to the manufacturers that there is a market.

Abel Adamski

As Greg alludes, it is the second hand market that will be the greatest influence, a large proportion cannot afford a new vehicle and the 5-10 year old market where depreciation of at least 50% (with battery factored in) brings them into the price range of many more people

Scott

Xcel Energy in Minnesota offers this. They call it Windsource. We’ve been 100 percent wind for several years now. When natural gas spiked a while back, we actually paid less than people who hadn’t signed up for Windsource.

You pay a few cents extra to cover the cost of capital to install the turbines, but then they credit you back the cost of coal and gas that “normal” customers pay since you don’t use any of that.

Also, it’s raining right now in the Saint Paul half of the Twin Cities. On Christmas Eve Eve. We have thunderstorms in the forecast for Christmas night. This is insane. With the exception of two days and one night, this entire winter has been unseasonably warm.

nwkilt

nwkilt

Genomik

This looks great! Thanks nwkilt! Its EXACTLY the answer I was looking for. I called them and Im in the process of setting this up. I will GLADLY pay a bit more to not sustain Trump/Koch. It seems like a reasonable economic AND political statement as well. Ill put my money where my mouth is since talk can be cheap. It doesn’t come out to much of a difference finacially. I live in an apt in San Francisco so its great for me, I cant anything on our roof. Further, this gives renters like me a chance to make a difference. Also renters (At least in temperate areas) dont have expensive bills. They have a offer to get 1/2 your bill from alternatives at no additional cost.

Anybody have a good reason to NOT do this? Otherwise it seems perfect for the audience of a group like this.

Genomik

Please if anybody has anything good or bad to say about this please reply. I don’t want to seem like I’m a tout for this company its just that this seems like a simple way to economically resist fossil fuels so it seems particularly relevant in this thread.

If enough Americans signed up I could see how that literally could stimulate more building of solar and wind as the companies have customer demand.

Vic

The town of Broome in the Kimberly region of north west Australia has just had its wettest December day on record, taking the monthly total to 359mm, totally smashing the previous December record of 279mm set back in 1970.
And it’s not over yet, with Tropical Cyclone Yvette expected to cross the coast nearby in the coming days.

mulga mumblebrain

Vic

Spike

A milestone in the UK, although it would look a lot less impressive without Scotland’s push.”Scotland’s last coal power station closed in the spring, and coal plants in West Yorkshire and Staffordshire were shuttered. That caused coal power’s share of generation to plummet by more than three quarters, down from 16.7% in Q3 2015 to just 3.6% in the same period this year.”

Andy_in_SD

Forget solar roofs. The world’s first solar road is here, in the small village of Tourouvre-au-Perche in Normandy, France. The 1 kilometer road was opened yesterday by French Ecology Minister Ségolène Royal and could generate enough electricity to power the street lights.

That might not sound very impressive for 30,000 square feet of solar panels — and it kind of isn’t, especially for its $5.2 million price tag. The panels have been covered in a silicon-based resin that allows them to withstand the weight of passing big rigs, and if the road performs as expected, Royal wants to see solar panels installed across 1,000 kilometers of French highway.

lesliegraham1

Let’s hope the cost trajectory follows that of standard PV panels in recent years.
In some ways it seems such an obvious idea. The substrate is already there – millions of miles of it – and it doesn’t take too much imagination to see this new ‘PV road surfacing’ rolling off the back of huge trucks perhaps 30 years hence.
However, this scheme does have it’s critics.
Just a pity we didn’t start doing it back in the 80’s when there was just a tad more time.
If it does work it’s going to be yet another game changer.
We are going to win.
We’ve got shed loads more sun than they’ve got oil.

In just two years, since the sponge was last surveyed, it has entirely vanished in the area around popular tourist resort Listvyanka and Cape Tolsty, in Irkutsk region, and over a wide area in the north of the crescent-shaped lake which contains around 20% of the world’s unfrozen freshwater.

One theory is that the lesion of the sponge in coastal areas is caused by the impact of tourists, and the pollution that accompanies them, and the consequent growth of harmful foul-smelling algae.

Igor Khanaev, of the Limnological Institute, in Irkutsk, said referring to the Listvyanka area: ‘It is clear that the waste discharged by boats have seriously changed the ecosystem of the lake in this area.’

Another is that methane leaks from the lake – the deepest on the planet – could be a factor. There have been claims the sponge is suffering from an ‘unknown disease’ caused by bacteria. Baikal sponge of 5-7 centimetres cleanses per day up to 20 litres of water from bacteria and different minerals.

Their massive presence has been seen as playing a leading role in the process of biofiltration of Baikal’s water, which over the years has been seen as uniquely pure, although now there are increasing warnings about pollution.

Shawn Redmond

aWhen asked what has kept him in his job for so long, the longest serving presidential science adviser in history answered without hesitation.
“What kept me in the job is working for the most science savvy president since Thomas Jefferson,” Dr. John Holdren said. “And in a situation where there’s a lot more science to be savvy about today than there was when Thomas Jefferson was president.”
Holdren was clear that the man in the Oval Office, that man’s respect for science and innovation, and his desire to elevate those fields across government all made the past eight years a once in a lifetime opportunity.
“I would not have jumped off this ship for anything,” said Holdren.
But the winds of change are blowing hard. President Barack Obama will vacate the White House in a month and the tenor of the group assembled to replace his administration, particularly with regard to science policy, could not be more different. President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly called climate change a “hoax” and recently said “nobody really knows” whether climate change is real. (In reality, scientists are quite certain it is both happening and largely the result of human activity.)…….

Andy_in_SD

Andy_in_SD

We are passing the baton of world advancing research, and all of the benefits to the country which leads such endeavors to China, as we had enjoyed for many years. I wish them well in their stewardship of the planet, we will recuse ourselves to the backwaters.

Suzanne

I see that the media is reporting this as saying ‘Scientists’ are startled or surprised. No, they are not. This is expected. The scientists have been red-flagging this or years, when the media ignored their calls.

lesliegraham1

And not just qualified climate scientists either. Just about anyone who has been keeping up with basic climate related events and data over the last ten years knew there was a good chance this was coming.
Shame about the other 99% eh?
: )

It seems to me that claiming ‘Scientists’ are startled is a subtle way of creating doubt in the minds of the general public. To the segment of the population that denies climate science, this makes it easy to think that the scientists don’t know everything, and therefore everything that they say is suspect.

No, the scientists were not that startled. Not knowing everything is not equivalent to knowing nothing. I wish the New York Times and the Washington Post would stop using loaded language like this, and just report the story straight.

Everybody in the Arctic with half a brain and one good eye is startled by the changes, with the scientists probably the least startled of all.

Suzanne

There are warning signs that some forests in the western U.S. may have a hard time recovering from the large and intense wildfires that have become more common as the climate warms.

After studying 14 burned areas across 10 national forests in California, scientists from UC Davis and the U.S. Forest Service said recent fires have killed so many mature, seed-producing trees across such large areas that the forests can’t re-seed themselves. And because of increasingly warm temperatures, burned areas are quickly overgrown by shrubs, which can prevent trees from taking root.

Tragedy of the Commons? Destruction of public land by over-grazing brought about by free use of the Commons? I don’t get how that could be connected to this situation.

This is Tragedy of Polar Amplification brought about by fossil fuel use, or Tragedy of the Hot Blob in the Northern Pacific, or Tragedy of the Wavy Jet Stream.. Don’t see how this has anything to do with the Tragedy of the Commons?

Oh, destruction of the atmosphere by greenhouse heating, due to it being the common sink for CO2 from all sources?

I didn’t quite get it, because most of the bad actors who are causing most of the damage are privileged people, not the general population.

Since it is a limited number of large point sources (fossil fuel power plants) that are causing most of the problem, or a limited number of technological changes and corporate changes that need to be made, I’m still not sure that this is the best analogy for what’s going on.

Most of the general population just want to get around and burn the lights at home, and would be just as happy driving electric cars and having solar cells on their roofs. It’s a limited number of people who refuse to change the technology available to the general population, who are profiting from the present system, who are the problem. Your characterization of the problem as a Tragedy of the Commons is not quite right, I think.

mulga mumblebrain

Have you seen the trees that grow in the middle of the Sahara? Junipers, I think, thousands of years old, whose roots can reach the underground water, hundreds of metres down, Every year their produce fertile seeds, and viable seedlings, but they all die.

wharf rat

” Palo Alto is joined by Lancaster, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, and Santa Monica as cities that have all achieved or are pursuing 100 percent renewable power generation”

Electricity for Mendocino, Lake, and Sonoma Counties, as well as parts of Marin and Napa, comes from the geothermal complex at The Geysers.http://www.geysers.com/geothermal.aspx
They are being re-charged with reclaimed sewage water.

coloradobob

wharf rat
I worked with old hands from The Geysers, on a geothermal exploration rig. All over Northern Nevada. There’s a hell of a lot of geothermal that is untapped. A hell of a lot , thanks for this one.

coloradobob

A Christmas Day Typhoon Headed for the Philippines
By: Jeff Masters , 6:31 PM GMT on December 23, 2016
Celebrations of Christmas Day in the Philippines this year will have to occur amid emergency declarations as Typhoon Nock-ten puts a huge lump of coal into the stockings of residents of the main Philippine Island of Luzon. Satellite loops on Friday afternoon showed that Nock-ten was undergoing rapid intensification. A prominent eye was developing, surrounded by an intense ring of eyewall thunderstorms with cold cloud tops. With Nock-ten experiencing low wind shear of 5 – 10 knots and traversing very warm waters of 29°C (84°F), which were 1°C (1.8°F) above average, intensification into a Category 4 storm by Sunday appears likely. Unfortunately, the storm is on track to pass over a very heavily populated area of the Philippines, including the capital of Manila.

coloradobob

Much has been made of America’s wild land fire fighting policy in the West over the last 100 years, and it certainly cut against what the forests were trying to tell us.

But India didn’t have “Smoky the Bear”, Indonesia didn’t have “Smoky the Bear”, Brazil didn’t have “Smoky the Bear”, Canada didn’t have “Smoky the Bear”, Siberia didn’t have “Smoky the Bear”, East Tenn. didn’t have “Smoky the Bear”, Australia didn’t have “Smoky the Bear”, Israel didn’t have “Smoky the Bear”, so there must be something else at work here.

Bad forest management in all these places for 100 years isn’t the common key. Drought and heat are. Trust me, ain’t nobody been out in the taiga in Canada, and Siberia for the last 100 years putting out fires. They didn’t have to. The forests were wet and cold.

So let’s all give “Smoky the Bear” a break . The rise of these world wide fires , has our finger prints all over it . But not because of “Smoky the Bear”.
Human greed and human folly OK. But not “Smoky the Bear”.

nwkilt

CB, thank you for all your posts, of every type.
FYI, “Smokey Bear”
In 1952, Steve Nelson and Jack Rollins wrote the popular anthem that would launch a continuous debate about Smokey’s name. To maintain the rhythm of the song, they added “the” between “Smokey” and “Bear.” Due to the song’s popularity, Smokey Bear has been called “Smokey the Bear” by many adoring fans, but, in actuality, his name never changed. He’s still Smokey Bear.https://smokeybear.com/en/smokeys-history/story-of-smokey

coloradobob

Parliamentary Standing Committee recommends a national policy on managing blazes

With fires raging across Central Indian forests and the Himalayan Pine forests, the frequency of such blazes has risen by a drastic 55 per cent in the past year.

The number has touched 24,817 in 2016, a “really alarming” rise, from around 15,937 fires in 2015, says the report by Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology, headed by Rajya Sabha MP Renuka Choudhary, submitted on December 16. The committee has suggested a national policy on managing forest fires.

The increase is seen even though 2015, considered a drought year, had seen a decline in frequency of forest fires of around 16 per cent.

coloradobob

BECCS (Biomass Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage) would be an even better hero, I think, capable of putting large amounts of carbon back underground and doing so at a profit, especially if we put a price on carbon.

coloradobob

lesliegraham1

We had solar-heated water in Australia. Like you I just don’t understand why every house doesn’t have it as standard.
It was cheap simple technology with no moving parts which supplied far more hot water than we could ever use – every day – all year long – for years.

“In the Svalbard archipelago, sea ice usually begins to form in the inner parts of the fjords in early November. This November, however, no sea ice was observed. Throughout autumn, the wind pattern transported warm and moist air to Svalbard, leading to exceptionally high air temperatures and precipitation, which fell as rain.

Atmospheric and oceanic conditions in the fjord system were assessed by students from the University Centre in Svalbard. They noted an unusually warm ocean surface layer about 4 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit) above the salinity-adjusted freezing point (Figure 4a). Coinciding with exceptionally high air temperatures over Svalbard during autumn, the water has hardly cooled at all, and it is possible that no sea ice will form this winter.”

It is possible that no sea ice will form this winter, says the above assessment from NSIDC.

Ryan in New England

We just lost a courageous and inspiring figure. Climate scientists and astronaut Piers Sellers passed away after a battle with pancreatic cancer. Many are familiar with him from his appearance in Before the Flood. This brave man, when told he had only a short time to live, decided to spend his remaining time on Earth contributing to the understanding of climate change. He spent his final days studying the Earth and gathering data so he could do his part to help make the world habitable for the rest of humanity. We could use a billion more like him.

Suzanne

Shawn Redmond

Looks like there will be some extra coal for some CEO’s stockings this Christmas.

In ten years, India could get almost sixty percent of its electricity from non-fossil fuel sources, according to a government forecast published this week.
According to a draft of the country’s 10-year energy blueprint, the Indian government expects that 57 percent of the country total electricity capacity will come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2027 — a marked increase over the country’s Paris goals, which say that the country will reach 40 percent non-fossil fuel electricity by 2030. The draft also noted that no new coal-fired power plants would be needed to meet India’s electricity demands through 2027.

Shawn Redmond

Looks like the lumps of coal are appearing in some “stock”ings already.

Still, Norwegian oil major Statoil ASA (STL.OL), which in 2014 cited market access for deferring its Corner oil sands project, said on Dec. 14 it would sell all its assets at a loss and withdraw from Canada’s oil sands.

The same day, Koch Industries Inc [KCHIN.UL] announced it wants out of a yet-undeveloped local project. The Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) approved that request this week.

Statoil spokesman Erik Haaland said the sale was made so the company can concentrate on “new competitive assets” elsewhere. Koch did not respond to requests for comment.

Shawn Redmond

Even as oil prices push higher, fueled by an anticipated production cut by OPEC and other non-OPEC producers in the first six months of 2017, there is one area that may still be too expensive to produce: Canada’s Oil Sands.

Koch Industries’ oil sands subsidiary in Canada, Koch Oil Sands Operating (KOSO), wants to get out of its oil sands project in the Muskwa region in the province of Alberta, citing economic and regulatory uncertainties.

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“KOSO does not believe the current nor medium term economic environment in Alberta will provide opportunity to generate an adequate return on the required capital for construction of the Muskwa SAGD project,” wrote Bryon Lutes, Vice President of Business Development for KOSO, in a letter to the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER). “The longer term economic risk of the project is further burdened with regulatory uncertainty around the Climate Leadership Program and its potential impacts on the project, from carbon tax to the emissions cap, both recently legislated by the Alberta Government.”

Lutes notes that construction has not begun on the project, even though it was approved by the AER in June 2016. KOSO and Koch Industries did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

KOSO’s request marks the second major move in Canadian’s oil sands business this month. Norwegian oil giant Statoil ASA (STO) just exited its oil sands business by divesting its Kai Kosh Dehseh oil sand project in a $626 million deal with Canadian oil company Athabasca Oil. However, Statoil said the sale will trigger a $500 to $550 million impairment loss.

Genomik

China Wants to Build a $50 Trillion Global Wind & Solar Power Grid by 2050! I think China sees Trump as an opportunity to advance both economically and morally while Trump destroys the West.

Built on a backbone of a global ultra high voltage (UHV) grid, the project not only envisions global power connectivity, but global power generation. The grid will connect proposed wind farms in the North Pole, and solar farms built at the equator that transcend national boundaries. It’s exactly what’s needed if such renewable energy sources as wind and energy, which could potentially shoulder the vast majority of the world’s energy generation, will ever become a viable alternative.

The global grid will also curb international disputes and narrow regional gaps. Such a project might foster a larger sense of global unity among nations, since power generation and distribution would become a transnational, worldwide undertaking.

coloradobob

Bucky Fuller proposed an electrical loop around the top of the world . So that power plants could run in the dark, and supply demand on the other side of the world, during daylight. There by greatly cutting the need for power plants world wide.

“We have not hit the disastrous level,” says leading climate scientist James Hansen. “But we are close.”

“Last fall, I visited Hansen at his old stone farmhouse in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. It sits on 10 acres, with a tennis court and a row of carefully trimmed apple trees lining the walk to the front door. We talked in his office, a big room connected to a stone barn outfitted with solar panels. He had the cool, cerebral manner of a man whose mind is always processing complex algorithms. But at times he seemed downright cranky, as if he were losing patience with the world’s collective failure to deal with the looming catastrophe that he has articulated for the past 30 years. “It’s getting really more and more urgent,” Hansen told me. “Our Founding Fathers believed you need a revolution every now and then to shake things up – we have certainly reached that time.”

Cate

“…a student and I mapped each province’s….“low-hanging fruit” of renewables in the form of wind, solar, wave, tidal and some biomass energy. We compared this with total energy use, including electricity, transportation, heating and industrial production.
The bottom line: There is plenty of renewable-energy potential near current roads, power lines and population centres. Most of it is wind power, with plenty of hydro and solar as well. In fact, every province except Alberta and Ontario has a large surfeit – enough to be choosy about siting installations to minimize environmental side-effects….”

Of all the provinces, Newfoundland has the largest untapped potential:

“……were Newfoundland to develop the easily accessible part of its truly enormous wind resources and to export the power, it would generate an annual income of $200,000 a household.

I took a trip a few years ago from the “Boston States” to visit my parents’ people in Harbour Breton and Rencontre East in Fortune Bay. While driving down Rte. 360 from the TC Highway “through the country” to the South Coast we passed through many, many uninhabited square miles a high, relatively level plateau. This land was perfect for wind farms, with easy access and passing under existing high tension lines from the hydro plant at Head Bay d’Espoir. The wind power could be transmitted East-West. The existing hydro facility could expanded for pumped storage, and the power could be transmitted East to St. Johns and West to Port-aux-Basques for further transmission to/through Nova Scotia under the proposed undersea cable already designed to carry power from Labrador to the Maritimes and New England, (bypassing an intransigent Quebec.)

Also, when traveling West along the south coast, from Pool’s Cove to Bay l’Argent, we passed mile after mile of south facing hills and cliffs which would be perfect for solar, since that is at the same Latitude as southern Germany. This could also be tied into the existing power lines running north of that.

Wind, solar, pumped storage hydro, and a main high capacity proposed undersea power line to take the power off-island, and a large available work force now that many men from the oil sands cutbacks are now, back on the rock. It has possibilities.

Abel Adamski

May I wish all the Scribblers and lurkers a Safe and joyous Christmas, as the words go Peace on Earth to “men” of Good Will.at God Bless all you of Good Will and grant the courage for the struggle ahead

Cate

Dec. 24th, and it has been snowing enough the last few days that I am having a hard time keeping my panels clear much less the road off the property. The temperature is right at that point, just under freezing, that makes the snow stick to them. Anybody have any idea how to not have to climb up on the roof? Gotta be an easier way!

Today I drove up a narrow snow-filled not-plowed dirt canyon road south of me a few miles to take a disabled friend (hereditary COPD along with her destroyed knees and separating front rib cage due to an accident) over the ridges and down to do food shopping in Spokane. About a 100+ mile round trip. The people who said they would, two weeks ago, didn’t and kept putting her off. She ran out of food and called me for help.

Roads were so bad that I never took the old Toyota out of 4×4 all day. The roads are nasty icy underneath slick with falling snow all day long. She’s stocked for the next three months.

Yesterday I delivered Christmas food boxes for the Loon Lake food bank to 9 families between Springdale and Chewelah. Had to stop at the school to pick presents for them all (12 & under only). Nine families, somewhere around 36 people total, with 22 kids according to the official count. I do this 52 weeks a year.

Thursday, the day before, which is the normal day I deliver, I instead got to go play music at the Christmas blues jam at a local bar that I have not been able to go play at once since summer. Far more people than I thought would show up, half were musicians and most I’ve played with before. Most of us are older, late 40s-50s-60s and a few in their 70s. Blues primarily but the music runs from rock to folk to whatever someone is willing to throw down. Everybody gets to play a set.

A white-haired old woman blues singer/guitar player that I really like playing with showed, and when her turn came up this older black guy stood up to come play drums. Never seen him before but oh man could that guy play drums. She rolled into a Santana-style long song that she wrote and him and I got seriously down playing riffs back and forth (I’m an ace lead harp player and 6-drum conga/hand percussionist). I got nodded at by him a couple times, and even elicited a smile as that set ended and another guitar player came up to take a turn.

Later, as I was loading my music gear back into my truck, old Guilliard who was a top keyboardist who played on the road for decades across the country (lost most of his left hand a number of years ago but still plays good with his right!) came up and asked if I knew who the drummer was. I told him no but I sure did like playing with the guy. Guilliard smiled and said he’s played with him since the 1970s. Said that he told Guilliard that he liked my music and that I had a pretty damned good sense of rhythm for a white boy. I had to laugh at that and replied that as a 55 year as a surfer/skater I’ve got ocean rhythms running through my blood. Oh, and by the way, seal, Guilliard replied, that was Jimmy Hendrick’s drummer you were playing with.

So, on my birthday on a night I happened to not be delivering food bank boxes, I got to sit down and play some rocking good music with Jimmy Hendrick’s old drummer.

Now is that a cool true story or what?

To all of you, Happy Winter Solstice, Merry Christmas, and do something fun every day.

June

coloradobob

Climate change The warming Arctic
The country set to cash in on climate change

Asked if he is fearful about the impact of climate change, Tønnes “Kaka” Berthelsen’s response is typical of many Greenlanders. “We are more concerned about the Maldives,” he said bluntly.
Greenland has lived with extreme environmental changes for a decade or more. Sea ice is forming two months later and melting one month earlier. Rivers fed by retreating glaciers are at record levels. And temperature records were smashed twice this year, with stunned meteorologists rechecking their measurements after 24C was recorded in the capital, Nuuk, in June.

coloradobob

Cate

“The combination of 1.) extra ocean to atmosphere heat transfer enabled by record low sea ice and 2.) pulses of warm air from the south has produced stunning large temperature departures from normal.
There have been two Arctic heatwave episodes in 2016: 1.) centered 14-15 November and 2.) 24-25 December. Two more days of data and shortening the time interval to 1 day reveal that the recent heatwave is warmer than that in mid-November. See below…
Besides being alarmed we’re in uncharted climate territory driven by abrupt human-driven climate change, the concern I have is how the record low Arctic sea ice may be promoting cold-air outbreaks and storminess across the mid-latitudes this cold season…..
The image underscores the distinction between ocean and land and thus points to there being something to the pattern: “Warm Arctic, Cold Continents”. What are the impacts? Why should we care? For one, the patterns indicate a system changing state. For two: That change probably affects the frequency and persistence of weather, a hallmark of climate change; changing extremes… more hots and ironically sometimes sharper colds.”

Ryan in New England

Just wanted to wish all the Scribblers and others in the climate fight a very happy holiday! And while the future may look grim, let’s find the courage and strength to continue to push towards a %100 renewable future. And thank you, Robert, and others, for all you do to make this space so great 🙂

Cate

coloradobob

“There’s a lot of water … coming off the rock and what that does is just channels across the ring road around Uluru, some of those roads there were flooded by about 300-400mm of rain. Quite spectacular but very hazardous road conditions,” park manager Mike Misso told ABC.

coloradobob

Climate change censors driven by science denial and obeisance to polluters these days at the GOP-managed, Scott Walker-redefined “chamber of commerce mentality” Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources are at it again.

Not content with having already stripped content and links from an agency webpage about climate change – – deletions I documented some years ago and which I have frequently referenced – – the ideologues intent on scrubbing science off these pages and sowing doubt and confusion about the consensus view of experts worldwide about climate change have edited, deleted and otherwise compressed information in order to whitewash long-standing concepts and facts off a climate change page about the Great Lakes – – the same way, I will add, that Walker edited and watered-down the Wisconsin Idea, which has for decades had been the University system’s historic mission statement.

coloradobob

“The water component has made life easy for the women,” she added. “So using hand pumping is now a thing of the past. So women are no longer spending much time at the watering points. They used to spend four, five hours just to water a herd of about 50 animals. Some were using deep wells to water their animals.”

Dorcas Sibanda owns six cattle. She said “I can now do other house chores while cattle are drinking from the trough. Plus I no longer disturb my children’s learning. They can take their time at school without hurrying home to help.”

coloradobob

The mythical ‘endless summer’ is becoming a detested reality in South Florida

In 2015 and again in 2016, Miami’s weather in December was essentially no different from that in June or July — high temperatures in the upper 80s, dew points in the upper 70s. The resulting heat index was then in the 90s.

In Miami, over a dozen records have already been broken this month. All of them have been heat-related records; there hasn’t been a single cold record in winter’s first month.

Suzanne

I have only had my a/c off 4 or 5 nights so far this fall/winter. The night time lows for years now have not gotten very “low”…but usually by December you can turn off the a/c until April most nights. Not this year…way too warm and humid during the day and at night. Very depressing.

Suzanne

When we built the house 19 years ago…solar wasn’t feasible, so we designed a 3 zone a/c system…went over board with insulation…and kept every possible tree in an already heavily wooded property as close as possible to the house (probably too close…I hold my breath every time a hurricane comes through)….All of this has made our electric bills very low. We have looked at solar over the years…and there have been issues…including living in a state where they don’t “encourage” or incentivize solar which is maddening. But having said all that…with the new solar roof tiles that are coming out…and with an aging roof..we are hoping that would be something we can do when the time comes to replace the roof. And by then, hopefully, we will have gotten ridden of Governor Voldemort..and have a government that actually believes in CC an one that encourages renewable energy sources.

Suzanne

One more thing….Leslie is right about this regressive state I live in. It is “illegal” to go off grid. And a woman did get arrested for going off grid. Just boggles the mind…how Republicans just love to say “less government”….unless of course if it means less money for them or their corporate over lords.

Jeremy in Wales

coloradobob

Caroline Whitehouse is a Forest Health Specialist with Alberta Forestry and she says the recent cold has most likely done some good, but it still needs to get colder, and it needs to stick around.

“It definitely would have caused a certain amount of mortality in the population.” Whitehouse adds “The effect is also variable depending on the population numbers themselves.” This means in areas like northern Alberta the numbers might not change all that much, however here in the south and more specifically the K Country region could see Beetle Larvae mortality increase over the winter.

Whitehouse says for the cold weather to really help out it would need to get as cold as -35 and below as the Mountain Pine Beetles actually create and produce their own antifreeze to survive harsh winters.

“They survive by producing and storing a natural antifreeze, and it’s this antifreeze that helps to keep the larvae (that’s the life form that beetles spend the winter in) alive.”

coloradobob

Supermarkets to fly in emergency salad from US after Spanish floods
Heavy rains in southern Spain have hit supplies of leafy salads, celery and broccoli with shortage set to last into new year

Supermarkets are preparing to fly in emergency salad from the US after heavy rains and flooding in Spain hit supplies.

About 80% of fresh produce – including leafy salads as well as celery and broccoli – sold in the UK at this time of year comes from the Murcia region in southern Spain.

Suppliers spoken to by the Guardian said yields in the region had dropped to as low as 30% of those expected at this time of year on some crops, such as little gem lettuces, as farmers’ fields were inundated last weekend. Celery yields have dropped to 40% of normal levels while some citrus crops, including satsumas and clementines, have also been affected.

Jeremy in Wales

This is the most stupid use of resources. When I was a kid if it was out of season, it was not available and you ate something else and then it was more of a treat when it was available. Pickles, chutneys, stewed fruit are in my opinion preferable to iceberg lettuce!

coloradobob

Magmas near the critical degassing pressure drive volcanic unrest towards a critical state

critical degassing pressure (CDP)

We propose that magma could be approaching the CDP at Campi Flegrei, a volcano in the metropolitan area of Naples, one of the most densely inhabited areas in the world, and where accelerating deformation and heating are currently being observed.

coloradobob

We can run that climate change experiment , where the Sun get’s blocked by volcanic ash for months.

This is especially true for Campi Flegrei caldera (CFc), a long-lived resurgent caldera in the metropolitan area of Naples that was formed by the 39-ka Campanian Ignimbrite supereruption, which was the largest in Europe during the past 200 ka (ref. 18). Since the 1950s, CFc has been showing clear signs of potential reawaking, as indicated by frequent episodes of ground uplift (with a total of >3 m of permanent cumulative inflation at the caldera centre19), shallow seismicity20, and a visible increase in hydrothermal degassing14.

Jeremy in Wales

Will not be pleasant for the 1.5 million people living on and around this field, goodness only knows how they would move out even with a relatively small eruption. Having visited Naples I can confirm it is chaos and chaotic, it would be quicker to walk out of the city than try to use any form of transport.

coloradobob

Led by Zoological Society of London (ZSL), Panthera and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the study reveals that just 7,100 cheetahs remain globally, representing the best available estimate for the species to date. Furthermore, the cheetah has been driven out of 91% of its historic range. Asiatic cheetah populations have been hit hardest, with fewer than 50 individuals remaining in one isolated pocket of Iran.

coloradobob

Surface meltwater that drains to the bed of the Greenland Ice Sheet each summer causes changes in ice flow that cannot be fully explained by prevailing theories. Now a multinational, multidisciplinary team led by ice sheet modelers at Los Alamos National Laboratory is exploring how changes in extensive, sediment-choked subglacial “swamps” actually explain why the ice sheet’s movement slows down in late summer and winter.

bostonblorp

coloradobob

And how clean, and white it is under the surface.
As DTL kept telling us, that’s diesel soot, and coal fired power plants. Notice all the surface white patches, that’s where the surface has melted and washed the soot into the “plumbing”. All that is headed into the ocean.

I’ve seen a lot of “Dark Snow” images, but this one tells so much.
The surface looks like a coal mine, but the melt water has that lovely glacier blue. And the ice is so white.

Let’s all have a glass , of “Chinese Power Plant” water from Greenland, fortified with 300,000 million year old pure carbon.

Suzanne

All that dark, black snow…just makes me ill. It is no wonder Jason Box had to start the Dark Snow Project. http://darksnowproject.org/
And you just know that it will get worse as the ice melts and even more tankers make their way through the Arctic Sea…spewing even more fossil fuel.

Ryan in New England

Unbelievable image. The ice is covered in soot and you can see the texture that has developed from the darkest spots melting fastest. The ice looks furry. Just one more feedback loop that will takeover what we humans started.

bostonblorp

A few inches of fresh snow would help but we already know the ice will continue to melt all the same and that soot will rear its ugly head again and accumulate the added soot deposited on top. It’s the perfect passive technology.

coloradobob

coloradobob

bostonblorp / December 27, 2016
A few inches of fresh snow would help ……………

And it will bring fresh soot. Embedded in the snow.

The soot machine is running much faster than the snow machine. The soot machine runs 24/7/365.

As DTL kept telling us . With his sooty finger.

I stopped washing my white car . There , little specks of soot landed on my roof. My car is covered soot. They seem to really land when dew condenses on it’s surface.
Which makes perfect sense. Water cannot leave the air unless it has a nucleus to condense around. rain, snow, ice pellets, hail, and even dew cannot form unless a speck of dust, or in this case soot is there.
Ever since I saw DTL’s sooty finger. I have wondered if the new condensing nucleus, and the increasing water vapor. Are an unknown known.

coloradobob

So I went looking for the image above, and low and behold on the search page are dozens of images that link back here. I’ve seen this more and more . Yet another example of just how hard RS works this, crazy , crazy subject.

And just how much we owe him , for pulling all these crazy threads together, it a manner that people all over the world can understand.
Let us hope , that in 2017 he gets his MacArthur Genius Grant.

Because he’s way way ahead of the NYT’s, the Post , and all the rest of the pack.
At a time when the world seems to be growing poorer, he is making us richer. Because understanding is greatest wealth we can ever have.

Ryan in New England

Mark in OZ

Hear, hear ,here too!
Robert’s ‘mission’ is both education and awareness. The necessary changes that must be made will need to be in response to the demands of the world citizens. The ‘destroyers’ (FF related industries) will not be viable once their product is no longer needed. This is happening now but the adoption rate of renewables needs to accelerate.

It wasn’t that long ago that average folk nodded in agreement that reducing the polar caps to soften winter in the upper latitudes would be a good thing Some still do which is both astonishing and a progress indicator for the work yet to be done.

Ryan in New England

Jeff Masters on Typhoon Nock-Ten that hit the Philippines yesterday, as a Category 4 storm with winds of 155 mph. That made it the strongest landfalling typhoon on record anywhere in the Northwest Pacific so late in the year.

bostonblorp

Off topic, not trying to threadjack, does anyone have a handy-dandy explanation of how “accepted” CO2e is calculated? Specifically, what CH4 CO2e value is used? The standard of ~20x is based on a century-long net effect given its fairly short half-life of roughly 8 years. That’s pointless given that methane levels continue to rise.

If we were to take a real-time CH4 CO2e value of 120x, what would be the current “accepted” CO2e?

Suzanne

Elon Musk in under 12 minutes lays out what is causing increasing CO2 levels…why a Carbon Tax is essential….and how/why deniers do what they do. And he does it clearly and dispassionately…in a way anyone can understand.

coloradobob

Two Lakes Beneath the Ice in Greenland, Gone Within Weeks
Mysterious sub-glacial lakes build up over years—then suddenly drain away

COLUMBUS, Ohio—Researchers who are building the highest-resolution map of the Greenland Ice Sheet to date have made a surprising discovery: two lakes of meltwater that pooled beneath the ice and rapidly drained away.

One lake once held billions of gallons of water and emptied to form a mile-wide crater in just a few weeks. The other lake has filled and emptied twice in the last two years.Researchers at The Ohio State University published findings on each lake separately: the first in the open-access journal The Cryosphere, and the second in the journal Nature.

coloradobob

coloradobob

When I was a child we’d drive the 114 to Dallas for Christmas. There along the way we’d stop in the “Rock Inn” for greasy 50’s burgers, and real vanilla milkshakes. And 2 nodding birds dipping their becks in a glass of water ………

coloradobob

In July 1978 I was hovering in the shade of a freeway post at Lancaster , California, on an a freeway on ramp. I been there for an hour. Then suddenly I saw all the graffiti on the guard rails.

“This is worst place on Earth”
“Been here for 3 days”

My heart sank at 107 F degrees.

Then a giant red Buick convertible stopped . And he stopped every 50 miles, and bought 2 beers as we made our way down the Mojave Valley. As we proceeded a semi of bees was on the road. I passed that semi of bees , 4 times going back to Colorado.

I left California with 5 dollars.
I was at the worst point in my life when I left for California. I was the toughest son of bitch on Earth when I got back to Colorado.

You have know idea how far it is from Lancaster to Spanish Fork. With 5 dollars.

Cate

“Spreading messages of doom about the planet can keep people from making positive changes.” In particular, blaming humanity and trash-talking the human species as a whole is counter-productive in addressing the climate crisis.

miles h

on the one hand trash talking stops people making positive changes…. and on the other hand whitewashing over the problems by not being strident enough makes people think theres no problem nor any urgent need to do anything. and failing to blame ourselves is a lie and a moral failure. so how do we talk about climate change?
(im a bit from the doom-monger school – frighten people into doing something about it! at least its a genuine response.)

Indeed, Trump’s election is a triumph of climate denial, and will elevate him to the top of a Republican Party where prominent elected officials have publicly rejected the climate consensus. It’s not that the presidential election was a referendum on global warming. Climate change barely came up during the presidential debates, and voters rated the environment as a far less pressing concern than issues like the economy, terrorism, and health care. But that relative lack of concern signals that voters have not prioritized action on climate change, if they want any action taken at all. Trump’s victory sends a message that failing to embrace climate science still isn’t disqualifying for a presidential candidate, even as scientists warn that the devastating consequences of global warming are under way and expected to intensify in the years ahead.

mulga mumblebrain

Trump’s victory is a Triumph of the Dill, against science, rationality, peer-review, evidence and a decent concern for our children. It is, however, an Evil manifestation more or less confined to the Anglosphere, they being the countries most totally controlled by the Evil, moronic, vicious Right. That the current Right (but really throughout history)represent radical, omnicidal, Evil far more malevolent than Nazism is a truth that people seem afraid to accept, but until we do, these evil imbeciles will simply continue driving us to catastrophe. Of course it may already be too late, but until we acknowledge that this is a death-struggle between Good and Evil, we have no hope.

coloradobob

One more thing, Winnemucca. I drilled out of Winnemucca, 60 miles South of town. With a drunken driller , the pavement ended about 5 miles South of town. Then 110 miles everyday, on a dirt road one cannot image. Tom’s theory was to drive so fast, that our tires would only hit the top of the ruts. So every day for 110 miles I lived in fear we were about to swap ends.
But we never did. . What we did see were huge globs of dust hit our wing shield, like mud.

The finest most pure dust on Earth. It makes baby powder, look like gravel.

I loved Nevada, not Vegas , but Nevada.
The whore houses at Winnemucca were in a tiny little self contained square. The girls sat in windows with their fingers , going “come here”.

coloradobob

Tigertown

Fox News Chief Meteorologist had a nice segment today on 2016 extreme weather events. He came outright and said that we live on a warming Earth. Of course, I can find no record of the segment on their site. I wonder if he still has a job?

coloradobob

coloradobob

coloradobob

It all goes back to this =
To Monty Calcote . The mannish boy who changed my life. We smoked , and he showed me Chuck Berry. He died so long ago. In such a stupid way. I miss him so much. What a waste, what a loss, what a hole in my life.

Jacque

Bob – It was The Ore House – I checked with my old Santa Fe buds, as I couldn’t remember either – but that fine restaurant has been converted into a vertical shopping mall. Too many drunks fell off the balcony. I moved away after the 2000 Cerro Grande fire in Los Alamos (Over 280 homes were destroyed or damaged and 40 National Laboratory structures burned). At the time, it was the biggest NM fire in history. Since then the 2011 Las
Conchas fire burned over 103,000 acres (161 sq mi), making it the largest fire in New Mexico history and requiring mandatory evacuations. LANL’s stated mission: “To solve national security challenges through scientific excellence.” Hmmm…

coloradobob

“Our jaws dropped,” said Douglas MacAyeal of the University of Chicago. “We looked in the Pacific Ocean and there, 13,500 kilometres away – six days earlier – was the winter’s first really big, nasty storm that developed and lasted for about a day and a half in the Gulf of Alaska.”

The waves moving past a buoy near Hawaii and a seismometer at Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific confirmed their theory. “We think B15A was in the right position where these waves would be fatal to it,” Professor MacAyeal said. “The iceberg was shattered like a gracile wine glass being sung to by a heavy soprano.”

He said oceanographers knew ocean swells could travel around the world, but this finding reported in the Geophysical Research Letters journal raised the prospect that an increase in storms driven by climate change could affect far-flung parts of the globe.

coloradobob

The birth of B-15, and it’s off spring, B-15A and B-15B were one of the first things I really began to follow on the internet. I stumbled across this picture back in 2000 ……. And I say stumbled. Remember, in 2000 you couldn’t “google” B-15. Oh, there were search engines, but entering B-15 in their search boxes would’ve given you vitamins, not chunks of ice the size of Delaware.

The scientific consensus is that human activity is cooking the planet. Does President-elect Trump calling it a hoax embolden others in denial? Many people are concerned about the climate and deeply anxious that the new administration will double down on fossil fuels and erase recent climate progress.

Ten years ago Republicans John McCain and Lindsay Graham supported fighting climate change. But the party has changed it’s tune in recent years. Climate scientist Michael Mann and Pulitzer-Prize winning cartoonist Tom Toles take a satirical look at how the issue became so divisive. Cristine Russell is a veteran science journalist with deep knowledge about the politicization of science. Renee Lertzman gets to the psychology of it all. Are we all in denial to some extent? Can better communication help us expand common ground and move on to solutions? Join us for a fun and informative look at manufactured doubt and genuine skepticism.

Ryan in New England

mulga mumblebrain

Ryan, of course it is destroying, but not ‘the planet’. Just Life on Earth, that’s all. And we know who the omnicidists are-the Right. The capitalists, led by the fossil fuel industry, their MSM, led by the likes of Rupert Murdoch and their political stooges, either the hard-core Rightwing denialists, or the ‘Centrist’ Quislings who pretend to be doing something, while down-playing the harsh reality. I’d throw the climate science and the science establishments in, as well, because its years past the point where they should have been marching up and down, getting arrested, going on hunger-strikes etc. All Enemies of Humanity, some the worst such criminals in all human history.

Trude

Bluesky

I’m just half way through reading ‘a farewell to ice’ be peter wadhams, it seems very likely that we will see an ice free arctic summer next year or latest 2020. You actually only need to go down to 1 million km2 sea ice to call it a ice free artic (open water), and after a ice free september in the arctic, the winther ice cover right after will only exist of 1 year ice (0,5-1,5m ice thickness) and just 3 years after we will have an ice free arctic from july till november, 5 month in all. He say’s his a little unsure if the winther and spring ice will go too, but there is a chance in this century.

In the book it say’s the decrease in albedo effect from 1972 to 2012, had warmed the world the same as 1/4 of co2 emitted in the same time, and it’s immediately warming and also called a ‘fast postive feedback’.

Surcafe temperatures will go just from below or 0c to 7c when there is no ‘albedo effect’

Not to be a doomsday prayer, but if the arctic is going to be ice free in 5 month a year in a not to far distant future, aren’t we looking at a much quicker warming than even you have predicted robert?

The book has a chapter only about methane, that I haven’t even read yet, and a chapter for 6-7 other feedbacks, I’m only at the albedo feedback now..

It hard for me to deny the ‘arctic death spiral’ when seeing Paul Beckwiths video’s and reading this book, I think everyone would agree that I should not take too long before it happens when looking at these graphs.

Bluesky

He talks about the albedo being the worst of the 7 types of feedbacks, associated with the sea ice and snowline retreat. Mixing them together with the black carbon problem from forest fires and diesel cars, then the total albedo feedback will be the same as adding 50% to the radiative forcing effect of the CO2, that we are adding to the atmosphere.

Water vapour, he says we add something like 7% of extra water vapour content to the atmosphere for every degree warming in air temperature, and that adds 1,5 watts per square meter radiactive forcing, since water vapour is a greenhouse gas. If that is true, then alone because of water vapour, we should already have seeing a big temperature rise from only that. He say’s that in the artic the tempartures has gone up by 3 degress in average, that’s 4,5 W m2 of extra radiactive forcing.

And in november it was 11C warmer than normal in the arctic? Holy ….

I don’t know if his nuts, a doomsday prayer or what else, but it’s interesting reading I think, peter wadhams has been studying it for like 47 years, with most trips to the arctic. Don’t know who to trust, but it indeed sounds alarming to me, remember NASA actually agree with this, on how big impact the albedo effect are having on their own web site.

I think this year has prove that the jet stream are already messed up, with so cold air in siberian and warm air in the arctic.

Bluesky

Peter wadhams seems to agree with your ‘point of no return blog’ robert not too long ago about thawing permafrost on land, he dosen’t goes with the conservative estimate though, but the 4 times higher estimate of 110-230 GT like you said could be a risk too. And up till 2100 he talks about 800-1400 GT in all released from thawing permafrost.

At least there is a change that we can save us from the possibly risk of 50 GT methane burp from the east siberian arctic shelf, in some way of fracking and burning the methane by big oil companys, the only problem is that they has to be covering 2,1 million km2, but it could be possible to do, no one has calculated how much it will cost though. But if we don’t fix it it will cost 60 trillion$ in damage.

There are already warm water mixing downwards towards the seabed, up too 0,6C just above freezing in several months measured in the laptev sea as he says, methane are escaping out those shallow seabeds.

We will see if the world politicians can deal with these problems, but I must say with all these possitive feedback and this is only from the arctic, it’s not looking good. Not that I’m suprised, but I just started investigating it by myself big time since september this year reading most blogs on this site ever since, have read around 1000 climate change articles before that since 2009 but only from the mainstream and often misleading media, that gives us for example wrong temperature base line, and not the 1880 like they should. Though I got a felling things weren’t looking good before this I must admit. This site here is the best, artic news blog are very doomsday, but it’s still a good site too, if we looking at a longer timespan and what could possible happens within the next century. I think they got a point.

Bluesky

There´s one “non-conspiracy” reason for lesser emphasis in ice volume: there´s greater uncertainty in those numbers, as far as I known. Extent and area are really easy to measure with the use of sattelite photos, but volume is trickier, and though better sattelites have been launched to measure the mass of ice, and in-loco results are also used, the historical data isn´t as clear and long-recorded as the data for area and extent. So it´s easier (which is very different of more accurate) to report in area and extent (and mass media has an habit of confusing these two).

Bluesky

ROBERT, I have used a lot of time today reading some articles from start 2014 on this blog and slowly forward, I could have saved some money haha, many of the things said in the book, you can find in here in a more easy language to understand. Really good articles you have made in the past, the best site if you want to be climate opdated I really think.

Now I will lay low for some time, but I maybe have some questions later 🙂

Bluesky

Finished reading the book today, it was good reading and it has some interesting data in it, I don’t give much for people who say’s he’s an alarmist. Not after what we have seen in 15/16. By the way, Peter wadhams say it’s necessary to pull 35 GT CO2 out of the atmosphere by around 2020 and up till 2100, and big reductions in emissions from now, +geoengineering in the meantime to hold temperatures low up till 2100, without geoengineering it’s not possible to stay under 2C. He comes with a lot of solutions that can be done do safe human from end of civilisation, and that’s good so not all are doom and gloom.

If we fail to do so, we will see major consequences in already 20,30 years from now he says.

A really good book I think, giving maybe some people hope or little hope at least. If you ask me, no freakin way this is going to happen to pull that amount of carbon out in just 3 years from now, maybe a little chance 20-30 years out in the future.

we live in a world of greed, and if you tell people about how fast we must act and how bad the situation are, they won’t belive you and they won’t do nothing, because the message is to dire. They will probably do something but it’s not enough, or fast enough.

This is even without the possitive feedbacks kicking in, which I think have already started if you look at the amazon drought, arctic, wildfires around the world, and methane. Just my opinion, but I’ll try to stay possitive and not think to much of it, but not doing so good. I’m not saying we are doomed, maybe we still have a chance and I slightly believe in it, but it’s getting smaller for everyday passing.

Suzanne

Most MSM probably won’t ever get that, just too far down in the weeds. Most MSM don’t know difference between watts (instantaneous energy production) and watt-hours (energy produced over time (very basic info)). Reporters who specialize may get it, others won’t. Most reporters are generalists, need to be able to report on wide range of stories.

Ryan in New England

Yesterday morning (in Connecticut) it was about 30F warmer than average when I woke up. The daytime temps were about 60F, and I went for my run in shorts and a T-shirt. This is the 3rd year in a row we’ve seen 60 degree temperatures either on Christmas or within a few days of the holiday.

coloradobob

Skiers left disappointed as snow steers clear of Swiss slopes
The Local (Switzerland), 27 December 2016, 13:33 CET 01:00
As if last year wasn’t bad enough, a lack of snow at Alpine ski resorts during the Christmas period has left some slopes completely bare. And as temperatures rise to unseasonable highs, there is little sign of much snow falling before the end of the year. Several resorts, including the popular Charmey, where no snow has fallen since December 19th, have closed due to the mild weather. The situation is much the same as the 2015 season, when snow didn’t arrive until the middle of January. ..http://www.thelocal.ch/20161227/skiiers-left-disappointed-as-snow-steers-clear-of-swiss-slopes

coloradobob

coloradobob

Tillerson Led Exxon’s Shift on Climate Change; Some Say ‘It Was All P.R.’

In January 2009, Rex W. Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, gave a speech in Washington that might have seemed impossible even a few years before. He announced that his company supported a carbon tax to help fight climate change.

Carbon taxes are a fee on fuel use, based on how much carbon dioxide that fuel puts into the atmosphere. “As a businessman, it is hard to speak favorably about any new tax,” Mr. Tillerson told reporters in his speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. But, he said, it was “a more direct, a more transparent and a more effective approach” than an alternative gaining support in Congress known as cap and trade, which would set an upper limit on carbon dioxide emissions and then rely on a permit-trading system to meet the target.

coloradobob

Exxon’s market cap is about 340 Billion Dollars , but it’s those greedy, grant grubbing climate scientists who have all the real power. Just look at their ads on CNN , sorry they don’t run ads on CNN. It’s NOAA , that pack of cheats trying to gain world power , sorry they don’t run ads on CNN. It’s NASA that secret cabal of commies trying to gain world power, sorry they run don’t ads on CNN.

So who runs ads on CNN ? The richest group of people in the history of the world.

Now they will run our world. In the name of the “Little People”. Let me know how that turns out “Little People”.

Yes, it’s all PR. The whole Lee Raymond fight to take over ExxonMobil in 2006 was a sham fight – his 400 million dollar golden parachute was a reward for engaging in the whole scripted farce. Rex Tillerson is not more environmentally responsible than Lee Raymond was – he is just slicker about his opposition to clean energy and global warming. He talks about “adaptation” – denier code for “get used to it”.

Yes, the carbon tax proposal from ExxonMobil was a sham. They know that anything labeled as a tax is dead on arrival to the GOP faithful, and also to the new Tea Party bunch.

Lies an the lying liars that tell them – put Tillerson close to the top of the list. The Rockefeller financial dynasty has always lied and concealed the truth, and concealed their wealth. Their charitable foundations make wealth eternal and tax free, and somehow the voting of the big blocks of stock they give to their foundations always seems to favor the Rockefeller faction, in proxy fights like the one for supposed control of ExxonMobil in 2006. Put Tillerson close to the top of the liars list – but put the Rockefellers at the very top.

All of the above is just my opinion, of course. But it all makes a consistent hypothesis, I think.

By the way, so far as I’ve been able to determine, the Rockefeller family wealth is managed as a block, as it always has been in the past. In the past, it was managed out of 30 Rockefeller Center, now moved to 1 Rockefeller Center and 10 Rockefeller Center. But family members are still treated as clients by the unified management, and the wealth is still contained in an impenetrable maze of trusts, and trust departments of major banks like JPMorgan Chase. There still exists a plausible network of interlocking directorships leading to the possible control of tens or hundreds of major American corporations.

So the whole “the family if fragmented and half of us are environmentalists” meme about the Rockefeller family may also be PR.

This is just my opinion, of course. But it does appear to make a consistent hypothesis that the Rockefeller family continues to be the best example of the oligarchic model of American Governance.

Bernie Sanders talks about the oligarchy and breaking up the big banks, sounding a lot like he was talking at least partially about the Rockefellers, ExxonMobil, JPMorgan Chase, and Citibank. When he was running for President, it made sense for him to continue to be ambiguous. Now, I’m not so sure.

Interestingly enough, I just found out it is possible to donate stock to charitable foundations while retaining the stock voting rights. The IRS currently has rules about whether the gift then becomes tax deductible, though. But to retain voting rights to the stock is perfectly legal.

coloradobob

wharf rat

Having lived the first half of my life living about 5 minutes from Crystal Springs, I was astonished and delighted to read this story. Congrats to all those who have been fighting to protect the environment for the last 50 years.

SAN MATEO — A nesting pair of bald eagles at Crystal Springs Reservoir has made history yet again by raising two chicks that are now soaring above the vast Peninsula Watershed, symbolizing the once-endangered predator’s resurgence in the Bay Area and beyond….

The parents came to the mountainous Peninsula Watershed in 2012 as young adults, building their first nest on the western shore of the reservoir, which stores drinking water for the Hetch Hetchy Regional Water System. It was the first bald eagle nest spotted in San Mateo County since 1915.

Their first attempt to reproduce failed, but the raptors have improved with practice. In 2013, they moved their nest inland, to a spot that is not visible to the public, and became the first bald eagles to raise a fledgling in the county in 98 years or more.

A study published in the journal Nature has revealed an alarming new climate feedback loop: As Earth’s atmosphere continues to warm from anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD), soils are respirating carbon — that is, carbon is being literally baked out of the soils.

Microorganisms in soil generally consume carbon, then release CO2 as a byproduct. Large areas of the planet — such as Alaska, northern Canada, Northern Europe and large swaths of Siberia in Russia — have previously been too cold for this process to occur. However, they are now warming up, and soil respiration is happening there. As a result, these places are contributing far, far more CO2 and methane to the atmosphere than they ever have.

This phenomenon is already evidenced by a recently released study led by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which Truthout reported on recently.

This means that even if all human fossil fuel emissions were halted immediately, soils would continue to release approximately the same amount of CO2 and methane emissions as the amount produced by the fossil fuel industry during the mid-20th century.

Another Tipping Point

The study showed that the uptick in soil respiration is set to add between 0.45 and 0.71 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 to the atmosphere each year between now and 2050.

Disturbingly, humans are already adding between 3.2 to 3.55 ppm of CO2 to the atmosphere as of this year, which is the first time CO2-increase rates have broken records two years in a row.

The amount of CO2 that soil respiration will add to the atmosphere — on top of what humans are directly adding — is significant.

Climate feedback loops, sometimes referred to as positive feedback loops, runaway feedback loops, or amplifying feedback loops, are important to understand if we are to truly comprehend the nature of ACD. Many feedback loops are already in play, and more are coming into being on a regular basis.

For example, when atmospheric warming caused by fossil fuel emissions leads to the melting of Arctic sea ice, the reflectivity lost by disappearing sea ice allows more solar radiation to heat the Arctic Ocean, which then causes more sea ice to melt. This is perhaps the most well-known climate feedback loop.

The discovery of the soil feedback loop intensifies concerns about our rapidly warming climate. Increasing soil respiration — also known as “the compost bomb” — is set to add between 30 and 55 billion tons of extra CO2 to the atmosphere over the next 35 years, as Earth’s temperature warming approaches 2C.

Moreover, the study categorizes its findings as conservative estimates. In fact, the Earth could well see as much as four times the amount of CO2 (2.7 ppm) from soil respiration alone if the phenomenon becomes more wide-ranging than expected. And given that scientific predictions rarely keep pace with how rapidly the planet is changing, it would not be surprising if the prevalence exceeds expectations.

Catastrophic for Humanity

Dr. Thomas Crowther, the lead researcher on the soil study, told The Independent that, given that ACD is happening more rapidly than expected, the impending climate-denying Trump presidency could well be “catastrophic for humanity.”

He is not exaggerating: A lot can happen in four years, when it comes to climate disruption. In fact, every year makes quite a difference. The study shows that at a minimum, 0.45ppm of CO2 will be leached from northern soils every year between 2016 and 2050, with about 1C worth of atmospheric warming during that period.

The study also shows that if Earth is warmed to 2C above preindustrial baseline temperature levels by 2050, which is essentially a certainty in the best-case scenario, then an average of approximately 0.71ppm of CO2 will be released from soils every year through the year 2050.

The Earth has already warmed by more than 1C above preindustrial baseline temperatures. It is unlikely that human civilization can survive warming of 3.5C or higher, as humans have never lived on a planet that warm. However, we are currently on track for a minimum warming of 5 to 7C, or worse, by 2100.

“It’s fair to say we have passed the point of no return on global warming, and we can’t reverse the effects,” Dr. Crowther told The Independent when the study was released. “But we can certainly dampen them.”

Other climate scientists emphasized the importance of using the soil study to inform measures to mitigate the damage of ACD. Professor Ivan Janssens with the University of Antwerp called the study “very important,” because the response of soils to ACD could well be one of the largest sources of uncertainty in climate modelling.

“We urgently need to develop a global economy driven by sustainable energy sources and start using CO2, as a substrate, instead of a waste product,” Dr. Janssens told The Independent. He suggested that if significant progress is made on this front, it may still be possible to avoid catastrophic warming.

islandraider

Keep flingin’ it CB! At least what you say makes sense. Very little of what I am seeing in this particular version of reality that we are experiencing right now makes any freaking sense at all. I am hoping for a new version soon…

“Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find money cannot be eaten.”
~ Cree Prophecy

Cate

Ryan in New England

According to a draft of the country’s 10-year energy blueprint, the Indian government expects that 57 percent of the country total electricity capacity will come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2027 — a marked increase over the country’s Paris goals, which say that the country will reach 40 percent non-fossil fuel electricity by 2030. The draft also noted that no new coal-fired power plants would be needed to meet India’s electricity demands through 2027.

Thierry Lepercq, head of research, technology and innovation at the French energy company Engie SA, said in an interview at Bloomberg that he sees a potential for the cost of solar electricity to fall below $10-megawatt hour (1¢/kWh) in the sunniest climates by 2025. Lepercq believes “solar, battery storage, electrical and hydrogen vehicles, and connected devices are in a ‘J’ curve (of upward growth potential).” One consequence of this new energy economy is that, “the price (of oil) could drop to $10 if markets anticipate a significant fall in demand.”

“The promise of quasi-infinite and free energy is here.”

The key argument being pushed regarding renewables by Lepercq is price – nothing to do with environmental concerns at all. From a business perspective, Engie is hoping to grow into the microgrid market in the coming years – as can be noted by the combination of technologies and studies from the article:

In France, Engie recently conducted a “very deep modeling” of the Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur region of 5 million inhabitants, showing it could run entirely on renewables by 2030 for as much as 20 percent less cost than the current energy system, Lepercq said. Solar, wind, biogas, large-scale battery storage and hydrogen would be key elements.

As we’ve seen in the past year, the price of utility scale solar electricity in sunny climates has plummeted. This has led to significant thought about what the results of “quasi-infinite and free energy” could lead toward. Israel has solved water problems in a desert with the largest solar desalination plant on the planet. China has suggested a $50 trillion global HVDC electricity grid to take advantage of global renewable energy resources. Not to mention that a massive build out of solar power would add tens of millions of jobs globally.

In order to cover all basis, there are even efforts, like the Land Art Generator Initiative (pictured above), that hope to prove to us that ‘renewable Energy can be beautiful.”

Electricity prices on the German (wholesale) spot market are negative today: not enough flexibility to cope with extreme wind energy output. pic.twitter.com/LoPOAbSSDD

— Kees van der Leun (@Sustainable2050) December 26, 2016

Those forward-looking ideas are of course countered by the hard economics hitting business and people today. Other forms of energy are requesting economic support (coal & nuclear) while we transition away from them toward cheaper sources. In Germany, where wholesale pricing of energy sometimes go negative (due to wind – pictured above – or solar), the nuclear industry has won compensation for its shut down. While the nuclear shutdown wasn’t directly due to the low price of renewables – the general population had a gut feeling that they can support this shutdown due to the ongoing energy revolution. The above-noted coal industry in the United States got plenty of attention in the recent Presidential election for its less than 200,000 jobs that are at risk.

There will be real world long-term consequences – $10/barrel oil might be one – for these coming low energy prices. What a surprise of course – most of the naysaying has been that renewables were too expensive, soon we’ll hear about how they’re too cheap.

islandraider

That is the thing, really, that saps the hope. People. 7.4 billion & growing. Human nature. From what I have seen of human nature, even if we have the ability to avoid the worst of this, the nature of human beings prevents meaningful action on a scale to truly address the problems.

I worked for a number of years on a pollution prevention program in a small, rural, very liberal-leaning community. I was not tasked with saving the planet, or stopping global warming. I was simply trying to get people to understand what is a ‘hazardous waste’ & help them understand how to handle, store & dispose of it… and get them to stop dumping it into our local waterways & ecosystem. I had no ticket book. This project was education only. I resigned the position after several incidents. The final one involved a well-known, very liberal, Grateful Dead worshiping hippy was dumping chemicals into the bay. I tried to explain why this was a bad idea. I gave him options that did not cost anything (but did cause some inconvenience). He stood in front of my vehicle for 45 minutes swearing at me & telling me I did not deserve oxygen to breathe. I stood there & listened. I tried reason. As I had done countless times before, I tried to explain… I really tried… then I stood there while he yelled at me.

I think that there is no amount of awareness that will convince a significant portion of humanity to willingly lower their standard of living. This is their perception (real or not) that lowering fossil fuel use will result in a decrease in their, personal, standard of living. They are not going to willingly do this. While technologically possible to get out of our collective predicament, I think it is the nature of humans that we likely will not do it. I am sorry for the pessimism, but this is my read on the situation (after many, many years thinking, working & trying). That said, I am not sitting by idly. I have solar power in my home. I rarely drive an automobile. I grow food. Etc. As Chris Hedges has said: “I don’t fight fascists because I think I will win, I fight fascists because they are fascists!” Or to paraphrase: I don’t think we are going to win this fight, but I intend to fight to the bitter end nonetheless.

Islandraider – unfortunately so true – I didn’t look at comments on 1st reading. Also wouldn’t have expected so many asinine comments on truth-out. Almost makes one suspect a conspiracy of trolling, subsidized by FF industry. Have come to expect such idiocy in AGW comments on WaPo, NYT, Guardian, etc .. but not on truth-out.

Genomik

Ironic, Grateful Deadheads are a trip. Many are big lefty hippies but in some ironic twist many hard core Libertarian right wing people I know wear Grateful Dead on their sleeve. Its dumbfounding to me. Real hardcore ideology! I guess they want to be free to do what they want, take the drugs they want and pour all the chemicals they want into shared resources. Freedom!

Cate

re the perception that cutting fossil fuels will require a “lower” standard of living: in Collapse, Jared Diamond suggests that the First World will never voluntarily drop its expectations in order to share the planet’s resources equitably and sustainably with others. Given that planetary resources are finite and that population is still growing, and that the rest of the world wants everything the First World has, the logical conclusion is that our current First World standard of living is willy-nilly going to take a beating. It’s peaked and it’s coming down—my son’s generation are already priced out of the housing market, for one tiny example. So the only choice we have is, are we going to take some control over how our collective standard of living is transformed, or are we going to let (human) nature take its course in that regard?

Oh, I don’t think we have to lower the standard of living to fight global warming. The huge, huge resource of solar energy indicates that this is not necessary – at least not yet, and maybe never. We just need to change the technology. We can do fine, and live fine lives, with solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and other sources of clean energy.

We can also put carbon back underground with BECCS (Biomass Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage) and bring the whole climate system back into control, I think:

I like the comments. I think they are full of energy, compassion, true feelings of hope and despair and interesting ideas.

coloradobob

Up to 20,000 fish and other sea creatures have washed ashore dead in Western Nova Scotia, in Canada. The exact cause of the mass deaths off the coast of one of Maritime provinces in eastern Canada, is so far confounding officials, and concerning observers.

Canadian authorities say as many as 20,000 fish, lobsters, starfish, scallops, crabs and other animals have washed ashore dead at Savary Provincial Park. The number of species involved has gradually expanded as more creatures have washed ashore. None of the dead fish and sea creatures are safe to eat, authorities said.

Uncle B

I read CNN’s version of this story. They mention warming waters, lack of oxygen, etc. But they stop short of assigning proper blame to man-made climate disruption. For them to say that experts are confounded is pure nonsense. Experts know exactly what the hell is causing this.

redskylite

Thanks for sharing this article Coloradobob – I’ve read 3 different reports that all suggest that the investigating scientists are flumm0xed (if not stumped – “no-one knows!”) , and one suggestion it’s been caused by a recent marine turbine power generation project. Pretty poor reporting on a sad and so far unexplained event. A better article today in the New York Times that at least acknowledges that we are effecting the marine ecology detrimentally.

“We used to come right here and catch two, three, four thousand pounds a day, sometimes 10,” he said, sitting at the wheel of the Proud Mary — a 44-footer named, he said, after his wife, not the Creedence Clearwater Revival song — as it cruised out to sea.

But like many other fish on the Atlantic Coast, whiting have moved north, seeking cooler waters as ocean temperatures have risen, and they are now filling the nets of fishermen farther up the coast.

Studies have found that two-thirds of marine species in the Northeast United States have shifted or extended their range as a result of ocean warming, migrating northward or outward into deeper and cooler water.

Wishing all the “scribblers” a happy 2017 and hoping for progress in our efforts to de-carbonise our energy sources.

Cate

DFO now saying probably environmental—possibly a dip in water temps because of a storm? The thing is, the only fish affected were herring. The rest were shellfish and bottom feeders, and all in a very local area. Despite not knowing the cause, DFO is adamant that the fish are not safe to eat, but how can they say that if they don’t know what caused the mass kill? At least they have–sensibly—ruled out that new undersea turbine. Some of the comments by folks who know the area are blaming nearby fish farms (pesticide use, etc)— which DFO in its wisdom would probably choose not to implicate.

Cate

The Council of Canadians has organized a petition on the dead herring crisis, in view of the sort of “information” DFO is providing:

Yesterday, the Canadian Press reported, “Scientists have yet to find a cause for the massive fish kill off southwestern Nova Scotia, but one federal official said he doesn’t think there is a reason to be concerned based on testing so far. Kent Smedbol, manager of population ecology for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), said Friday that while the lack of an obvious cause is ‘perplexing’, he doesn’t personally believe there is need for concern at this point. Smedbol said that to date scientists have not turned up evidence of disease, parasites or toxins, and nothing has ‘stood out’ in the physical examination of the fish and other marine life.”

Cate

NOTE: If warming waters due to climate change is the cause “this falls into the category of something entirely new…..”

“Possible Cause 8: Climate Change
Prof. Ted Leighton was quoted above talking about the “crazy warm” temperatures we have been experiencing and it is well known that the ocean is rapidly becoming more acidic, for example. If this is the cause, it falls into the category of something entirely new and not seen before in human history. At this stage, Porter says, he has been assured by DFO that “nothing has been ruled out.” No stone can be left unturned with this crucial marine food-chain fish population.”

That area was showing very high chlorophyll a concentrations, meaning a probable algae bloom, and so likely low oxygen levels, I think. As can be seen parts of that area are in the highest (dark red) color of chlorophyll a concentration, and so were likely quite hypoxic.

Herring, according to a scientific paper I’ve located, are affected by hypoxia – their swimming speed increases, and their schooling is disrupted.

So, it makes a consistent hypothesis, I think, that the high chlorophyll a levels might have had something to do with the dead herring. Dissolved oxygen levels were measured on the 29th of December, and by that time the scientists say the dissolved oxygen levels were “normal”. St. Mary’s Bay often has very high chlorophyll a levels, though, and probably routinely low dissolved oxygen levels. Unfortunately, the chlorophyll a images from NASA are severely affected by cloud cover, so we cannot tell what the chlorophyll a levels were on the 29th.

The Bay of Fundy has the highest tides in the world, and there are tidal power projects in the area, although I couldn’t find any in St. Mary’s Bay specifically. The dikes used to restrict tidal flow in such projects could potentially increase local hypoxia. The potential tidal power resource of the Bay of Fundy is huge. So there could conceivably be a cover up of the relationship between tidal power and hypoxia, to protect that potentially huge and profitable power source.

If there is a trade off between tidal power and fish kills, I’d say that the tidal power production is the most important.

Jeremy in Wales

Bob, in these long dark nights if you need to be reminded of the joys of life this song does it for me, at the moment.
Don’t let the title put you of Sebona Fi means something like “lather me”! A translation of the lyrics is here: https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Yws-Gwynedd/Sebona-Fi/translation/english
The first time I met a oil driller was hitch hiking back from geological mapping on Anglesey, when I got a lift with a driller on leave from the North Sea rigs in a souped up Ford to his home town of Bleanau Ffestiniog (the back end of nowhere) mad as a hatter and drove like one but real fun. Walked through the town – totally dead – and spent an hour vainly trying to get a lift when a truck came to a halt – it was the same guy off on his second job as a college DJ – eventually got to Aberystwyth to find the Argies had invaded the Falklands landing us with Thatcher for another 9 years. Her one saving grace – being a chemist – she took Global Warming seriously.

Hansen has changed his mind about the Venus Syndrome, in which the Earth becomes a twin of Venus due to runaway global warming. He now says he was wrong and that true runaway global warming is not possible. He talks about a low level runaway, these days.

I think, though, myself, that once the oceans start to boil all bets are off. Being dogmatic in a hugely complex situation seems very risky, and we might only get to perform this global warming experiment once.

Isaksen and others say that there is strong positive feedback between atmospheric chemistry changes and methane concentration, with the secondary effects of CO2 production from methane, tropospheric ozone, stratospheric water vapor, and exhaustion of the hydroxyl radical increasing methane lifetime being several times greater than the effect of methane without the secondary effects. So the secondary effects of methane release on radiative forcing are several times greater than that of the methane minus the secondary effects. I’ve seen scientific papers where methane lifetime increases from 8 years to 40 years as the hydroxyl radical becomes exhausted, if huge amounts of methane are released.

What if we have 100 trillion tons of methane hydrate in the global methane hydrate inventory? We’re coming out of a series of ice ages, and methane hydrate inventories could be at an all time high, maybe.

Add to that exhaustion of the oxidation mechanisms and increasing release of methane to the atmosphere from the oceans as basin scale exhaustion of nutrients and anoxia kicks in. Add to that the presence of a small percentage of high salt methane hydrate deposits that could be very sensitive to warming because they are at the triple point of the solid/liquid/gas hydrate system. Add to that methane from the permafrost, CO2 evolving from the oceans as water temperatures rise, and 7% increase in water vapor concentrations with each degree of global warming.

I sometimes wonder if the huge reservoirs of carbonate in the oceans could start dissolving in the more acidic ocean, and the carbonate end up as CO2. Chemical reactions are reversible, given a change in the reaction conditions. But there is a huge amount of dissolved CO2 in the oceans, even without that possibility.

The End Permian is still plausibly a methane catastrophe involving dissociation of methane hydrates, and there is still a large body of work supporting that theory. What impresses me about the methane catastrophe general theory of mass extinction events is that it makes good predictions…that also check out quantitatively when you do the carbon isotope ratio excursion calculations. In my laboratory experience, when a hypothesis starts making good qualitative predictions, it is probably right. When it makes good quantitative predictions, almost always it is the correct theory.

Add to that the fact that according to the astrophysicists the sun is 2-3% hotter than it was when the End Permian killed off about 90% of all species…surely more than 99.9% of all individual organisms.

Add to that the probable huge increase in hydrogen sulfide concentration, potentially killing both plant and animal life.

Will another greenhouse gas, carbonyl sulfide, sometimes thought to be a significant greenhouse gas in the early earth, become more common as plants die and enzymes in the plants slow their destruction of carbonyl sulfide?

The earth will continue? Maybe it will continue as a completely sterile twin of Venus. Maybe it will continue as a planet deprived of all higher forms of life. The question is how will it continue, unless we stop global warming?

That´s the worst nightmare I can imagine, but I still hope it´s improbable, because, at least to my eyes, it seems that the lag between emissions and temperature rise isn´t as big as once thought. And also, as far as I see, civilization isn´t that resilient. So, even though that seems to be the path we´re on, we´ll see civilization collapse before global extinction of all megafauna, and civilization collapse will curb emissions enough to avoid the worst fate.

Of course, I hope we´ll take the third path: curbing our emissions voluntarily (or a mish-mash of that… economic recession here in Brasil guaranteed that we´re in the target for the Paris goals and more, for example. There´s no need of full on societal collapse to curb emissions involuntarily), to keep both our civilization and a livable planet. Path seems dire most of the time now, but the possibility still exists.

I don’t think it is possible to assess probabilities yet. It’s a hugely complex situation. It may already be too late, or we may have decades or even centuries to go before positive feedback driven runaway effects emerge. The ice albedo positive feedback in the Arctic may already have doomed us.

If it weren’t for the methane hydrates, I wouldn’t be so worried, Umbrios. If it weren’t for the shallow subsea permafrost of the Siberian arctic shelf capping maybe 500 billion tons of carbon as methane (about 100 times the amount in the atmosphere now), I wouldn’t be so worried. If we have 5 trillion tons carbon in the methane hydrates, that’s 1000 times the amount in the atmosphere right now. If we have 50 trillion tons of carbon in the methane hydrates, that’s 10,000 times as much methane as we have in the atmosphere right now.

The huge quantities involved are scary – “The ocean, with around 38,000 gigatons (Gt) of carbon (1 gigaton = 1 billion tons), contains 16 times as much carbon as the terrestrial biosphere, that is all plant and the underlying soils on our planet, and around 60 times as much as the pre-industrial atmosphere, i.e., at a time before people began to drastically alter the atmospheric CO2 content by the increased burning of coal, oil and gas. At that time the carbon content of the atmosphere was only around 600 gigatons of carbon.” Most of this carbon is in the form of bicarbonate, which can transform into carbonic acid, and then dissociate into CO2 and water, especially under acidic conditions, I think. I need to find out more about this. Certainly, CO2 will start to come back out of the oceans due to warming of the oceans driving dissolved CO2 out of the oceans. Will the 28 trillion tons of bicarbonate in the oceans also start to become a source of atmospheric CO2?

So, only a small percentage of methane hydrates would have to dissociate to initiate a chain of events leading to ever increasing release of methane into the atmosphere.

I’ve never seen a scientific paper that I consider to be a worst case scenario, complete with oceanic anoxia leading to increased methane release, CO2 coming back out of the oceans into the atmosphere, and atmospheric and oceanic chemistry changes due to methane release

That´s why I said “I hope it´s improbable”. You´re right, we don´t known, and I don´t even known if there is someone who knowns.

But I hope this won´t happen. The collapse of civilization seems bad, but it´s also a great many stories begginning… it leaves a future behind (and even if that future is not for humans, who knowns, crows may build a better civilization than we did in the future).

Venus Syndrome… That is the death of everything that lives that we known of. It´s a different size of horror. One I try to ignore as a possibility, because what´s needed to stop it is the same that´s needed to stop the lesser evils, and contemplating it would paralise me like a deer in headlights.

Massive release of hydrogen sulfide to the surface ocean and atmosphere during intervals of oceanic anoxia:

“Abstract
Simple calculations show that if deep-water H2S concentrations increased beyond a critical threshold during oceanic anoxic intervals of Earth history, the chemocline separating sulfidic deep waters from oxygenated surface waters could have risen abruptly to the ocean surface (a chemocline upward excursion). Atmospheric photochemical modeling indicates that resulting fluxes of H2S to the atmosphere (2000 times the small modern flux from volcanoes) would likely have led to toxic levels of H2S in the atmosphere. Moreover,the ozone shield would have been destroyed, and methane levels would have risen to 100 ppm. We thus propose (1) chemocline upward excursion as a kill mechanism during the end-Permian, Late Devonian, and Cenomanian–Turonian extinctions, and (2) persistently high atmospheric H2S levels as a factor that impeded evolution of eukaryotic life on land during the Proterozoic.”

Oh, great. Now we have to worry about methane concentrations 50 times those of today, due to the impact of hydrogen sulfide on oxidation in the atmosphere. Oh, and destruction of the ozone shield.

The sun is 2-3 percent hotter now than it was during the End Permian, and we are just barreling into this possible Mother of all Mass Extinctions.

I guess lemmings don’t really rush into the sea, that is a myth, apparently. It’s hard to admit that the entire human race is not even as smart as a small rodent.

The albedo effect is weaker in the Antarctic because the ice in the South Pole is the glaciars above the landmass, not the sea ice. So most of the albedo effect won´t happen until the ice sheets are gone (losing West Antartica will cause a huge albedo effect, but the sea ice in the south is a very small percentage of the ice).

Also it helps that the “dark snow” effect is a bit less grave here in the south (both because of less coal usage and less industrial capacity). And up until last year (2016 is last year already), sea ice was growing in the Antarctic, not dwindling (melt water from the landed glaciers makes the sea water colder and fresher, aiding ice formation). I´m not sure if the diminishing ice in 2016 was a bad thing or not. Maybe we had less melt water? Or maybe now things are so hot that the melt water effect doesn´t matter anymore? Yes, I known, probably the last one.

Genomik

Excellent article. Its exactly what I tell my right wing anti immigration friends. If you really dont want immigrants you should help stabilize the climate. Trumps policies will create more refugees. But then again I often think the right likes things to become catastrophes. Folks go to church and get more desperate. Its done in Middle East Politics which is a good model for the GOP

“One of the strangest stories about totalitarian regimes comes from Romania. Under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu, the official temperature in Romania was never below 10 degree Celsius. No matter the snow and ice, the weather reports would always have temperatures above 10 degrees. The reason? Below that, the law required the heating to be turned on in public places, and Romania could not afford this.

“It is hard to say what is stranger about the story. A dictator who feels so omnipotent that he pretends he could change the reality of the weather? Or a population so misled, misinformed, or disillusioned that it will put up with the weather reports over what it knows to be true?

OT, but an interesting Climate Reanalyzer shot of ocean temperature anomaly from today shows spectacular thermohyaline flow with cold water from the North Atlantic cold spot draining south in an inverted V , directly south into the southern hemisphere, and also mixing along the NE Atlantic coast with the hot Gulf Stream. I don’t recall seeing the pattern this pronounced before, though my viewing is a little spotty. I really don’t know if the extent is anomalous, if the volume of flow has increased, taking all that cold south. The seas are very much warmer above the cold spot than on the Pacific side.

Witchee

Matt

OMG have been unable to get this far down the blog until now as so many posts! Just so sad 😦 Thank you so much Dave for letting us all know.
Thankyou DT I have learnt so much from your posts and you inspired me to renew my efforts in educating others.
Condolences to family friends and all here on this amazing blog.

With all the potential sources of CO2 and methane eliminating CO2 emissions will not be sufficient. so how do we start to lock the excess back up. Replanting forests, re-instating bogs, bio-char and soil enrichment or mechanical sequestration. Will forest have a chance to re-establish in the permafrost lands, http://munin.uit.no/bitstream/handle/10037/4051/article.pdf?sequence=1.

Whatever routes are chosen it still seems to suggest big government to implement and republican America has a aversion to this, perhaps it will have to be corporate big government which gets a free pass the world over.

redskylite

An interesting piece from Bob Henson in the Wunderblog on possible 2017 weather/climate attributes. (Teleconnections between the PDO state and ENSO in particular). Could we be in for another El Nino ?

“Strong El Niño events like the one we just had are usually followed by a significant La Niña event. If the atmosphere instead ends up cueing El Niño for 2017-18, it would reinforce the notion that we’ve entered a positive phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation–a sign that we might expect more El Niño than La Niña events for as long as a decade or two.”

redskylite

More on the inequality of Climate Change effects and conclusions from a team of scientists at Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley . .

Climate change is going to be very bad for the global economy

“To predict just how various countries might suffer or benefit, a team of scientists at Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley, have turned to historical records of how temperature affects key aspects of the economy.

When they use this data to estimate how various countries will fare with a warming planet, the news isn’t good. ”

coloradobob

coloradobob

coloradobob

Gonna lose my way tomorrow,
gonna give away my car.
I’d take you along with me,
but you would not go so far.
Don’t see what I do not want to see,
you don’t hear what I don’t say.
Won’t be what I don’t want to be,
I continue in my way.

coloradobob

I find it a comfort that we learn of DTL ‘s fate from gail zawacki. I remember her from the old Joe Romm site before those bozos at Thinkprogress swallowed it up.

A wicked smart treehugger . Finding out that she and DTL were online friends makes perfect sense. I saw a comment not too long along of hers, I forget where. She had a bad case of carbon blues that day.

coloradobob

coloradobob

A word about death, I live in the house where I nursed 3 of my family members before they died.
I have deep understanding of death. I was not a very good nurse. But I was there . Doing what needed to be done.
Believe me. die at home, and do it quick.

I am alone in this house tonight. So Believe me , better to drop dead. , than die of liver cancer.

coloradobob

I think it’s likely we’ll get a highly deceptive pause in atmospheric temperature increase. I hope to Christ that’s true. Hell will be coming for breakfast during the next El Nino cycle, though.

The oceans will continue to absorb most of the heat, and more of that will come out during the next El Nino cycle. I hope that the oceans continue to be CO2 sinks.

As Robert has said, cooling from increased Greenland melting might slow things down a bit. The Siberian arctic shelf is a long way from Greenland, though. I just hope that Semiletov’s and Shakova’s sudden methane release from the Siberian arctic shelf scenario, releasing up to 50 Gt of methane doesn’t occur.

John Barnes’ science fiction book Mother of Storms has a scenario of the weather effects from such a methane release, with giant hurricanes that spawn multiple daughter hurricanes killing a billion people.. That scenario (minus the artificial intelligence entities that save us, and all the sex and drama, of course) seems possible. John Barnes’ science fiction generally contains hard science fiction ideas that are actually plausible. I wish I knew where he got the computer modeling that the book is likely based on.

coloradobob

What the old system was an ebb and flow. All that is dead as a boot. All of that is under attack in our new world. Don’t bet on the old systems, What’s really crazy. Really, really crazy. The sun didn’t come up today In Barrow, but the land was melting.

Greg

Teared up here to hear the confirmation of DT leaving us. CB we lean on you more, you old Yoda you. Wonder if Robert could pay tribute and aggregate DT’s comments and create a link to them. Been so hard to contribute lately. I just don’t have it in me to read anything online. I’ve been getting my feet dirty, though. Finally, ditched the old honda aftwr 270,000 miles and have a plug in sucking juice out a socket. Been scaring the hell out of the squirrels. They don’t hear me coming no more….

coloradobob

coloradobob

coloradobob

Suzanne

Bob,
You have shown us what “tears look like on the web” …with your poignant musical posts.. Trust me your grief over the loss of DTL with these posts have had me in tears.
I know online connections are not suppose to be the same as “real” life connections…but I for one am feeling “real” pain at the loss of DTL….and I am for sure feeling your pain…through your posts.
Please stay strong Bob…we need you. Your wisdom, insights and passion.